Two years ago, Missouri lawmakers got tired of being told year after year that they were underfunding education. The state has consistently been in the bottom third in the nation in terms of per capita funding for schools. Its teachers, on average, are among the lowest paid in the nation.

Under state law, most of the money that goes to K-12 schools is appropriated through the “foundation formula,” which seeks to some degree to balance state funding between districts that can afford to raise their own taxes and those that can’t.

In 2016, lawmakers were more than $400 million short of fully funding the formula.

So they changed the rules. Under a bill sponsored by Rep. David Wood, R-Versailles, the Republican-led Legislature instituted a 5 percent growth cap that made it easier to tell their constituents that they were properly funding schools.